


Clouds Between Their Knees

by fairyroses



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: (It's All Just a Big Plot Device Anyway), Apologies in Advance For My Limited Knowledge of Russian Politics and Organized Crime, Canon Time Travel & Its Not-So-Canon Consequences, Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, Fake/Pretend Relationship, Fluff and Angst, Friends to Lovers, Hurt/Comfort, Mutual Pining, Post-Season/Series 03, Red Daughter Kara, Slow Burn, Undercover as a Couple, this fic is going to be a Beautiful Mess and I wouldn't have it any other way
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-10-04
Updated: 2018-11-25
Packaged: 2019-07-07 10:38:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 14,309
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15906600
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fairyroses/pseuds/fairyroses
Summary: In which a small lie spirals out of control, the Russian mafia serves surprisingly good Italian food, altering time has unforeseen consequences, and Kara and Brainy accidentally fall in love for real in the midst of a supposedly fake relationship.





	1. Chapter 1

Querl Dox does  _not_  panic. Panic disrupts the neural pathways, preventing clear thinking, and is therefore illogical and counterproductive. He’s a twelfth-level intellect—far too advanced to fall prey to something as simple and pathological as  _fear_.

He tells himself this as he rides up the CatCo elevator, desperately willing his erratic heart to stop pounding. He leans against the wall and tries to catch his breath, running a jittery hand through his hair in an attempt to tidy it, to make him look less like someone who’s just  _flown_ from the DEO headquarters to CatCo.

Ever since he built the Legion Cruiser, Querl has admittedly flown alongside his fellow Legionnaires less and less frequently, and he hasn't used his Legion ring's flight capabilities at all since settling in the 21st century, believing that such a spectacle would only alienate him further from his new peers in this unfamiliar time. In truth, he has not properly flown in  _months._

With that information in mind, a small readjustment period was perhaps to be expected.

However, he had not predicted that such a short flight would leave him so physically shaken. An internal diagnostic scan is already listing off the symptoms of a mild panic attack, but Querl obstinately disregards the information, focusing instead on controlling his breathing. He is _not_ panicking. He’s never panicked about a single thing in his life, and isn’t about to start now.

Besides, Querl—or rather, _Brainiac 5_ —is a Legionnaire. The very inventor of the flight rings they all wear, no less. He is  _not_ afraid of flying. He knows this to be a fact, regardless of what his body seems to be telling him. 

And, come to think of it, regardless of the  _nightmares_  he’s been having lately, as well…

He shakes himself out of his thoughts.

He has more important things to worry about than his increased heart rate, unsteady limbs, and rapid breathing, all of which are just as likely the results of adrenaline, released in a rush during his unexpected flight. 

Obviously, he hadn’t arrived at his workstation this morning prepared to _fly across National City_ , but an otherwise standard bank robbery had taken a turn when alien technology was used to disrupt the DEO's communications, preventing them from calling for Supergirl's assistance when the desperate thieves began taking hostages.

One look from Director Danvers had been enough to tell Querl what she needed him to do. Since J’onn’s departure from the DEO, Brainiac 5 is the only agent left besides Supergirl with the ability to fly, after all—making him the only one who could possibly reach her fast enough for it to matter.

So he'd done it, taking off in a rush of air worthy of Superman himself, intent on finding Kara. He hadn't given his actions a second thought. 

Perhaps he should have.

 _No,_ he tells himself firmly. _I am simply out of practice, after years of relying on the Legion Cruiser for transportation and largely staying out of the field. That’s all it is._

Upon thinking this, his pulse finally begins to slow, and his breathing evens out, the symptoms passing like a spent storm cloud. Like the episode never even happened. 

Querl sighs in relief.

 _That’s all it is,_ he thinks again.  _It has to be._

It has to be, because he’s on a mission. And missions must always take precedence over one's personal fears. 

The elevator  _dings_ , and Querl forcefully shoves any lingering uncertainties to the back of his mind as he pushes off of the back wall, striding into the office space with swift, purposeful steps. He looks around for Kara, fingers still twitching with residual adrenaline, but only sees a swarm of unfamiliar businesspeople. A few of them glance in his direction, but he’s otherwise ignored _. Good. Not attracting attention is good_. Now, all he has to do is find Kara, and—

“Brainy? Is that you?”  _Oh. Oh no._

He turns at his name, recognizing the voice immediately.

“Ms. Luthor,” he replies, and inclines his head in acknowledgement, hoping that a simple greeting is all that will be required of him. But of course, he can’t be that lucky. Not today.

“What are you doing here?” Lena looks around, scanning the area, before moving in closer to him. Her voice lowers dramatically. “Is something wrong? At the DEO?” Her eyes grow wide. “Is it  _Supergirl?”_

Querl opens his mouth, the truthful ‘Yes’ answer sitting on the tip of his tongue, but thinks better of it at the last moment. He’s not here to inform Lena of the current situation. That is not his mission. And doing so would likely only succeed in creating more problems. 

“No, no,” he says instead with a shake of his head, feigning nonchalance. “None of that. Actually, I’m here…for  _Kara_. Kara Danvers,” he clarifies, perhaps unnecessarily.

It is not, technically, a lie.

“Oh.” Lena tilts her head and studies him more closely this time, looking him up and down. He’s wearing standard-issue DEO uniform pants and a zippered black jacket—casual attire, especially compared to the blue Legion suit that Lena has seen him in previously. Querl must admit, he certainly doesn’t look like someone who combats extraterrestrial threats with Supergirl on a daily basis. With his image inducer turned on, he looks…functionally normal. Human. Which is good. It lends credence to his assertion that nothing is amiss.

“You’re here for Kara?” Lena echoes him—a human habit that he’s learned to recognize as a sign of confusion. Her eyebrows furrow, forming a crease between them. “What could you possibly want with Kara?”

There’s an edge of suspicion, of protectiveness, to her voice, and Querl abruptly remembers that Lena Luthor is not only Kara’s boss, but also her closest friend.

He swallows, desperately trying to think of a reason, any good reason, why he would be visiting Kara Danvers at her place of employment in the middle of the day. One that will not give Lena any cause for alarm. With his intelligence, he should be able to craft a believable excuse a thousand times over.

He comes up with  _nothing_.

(Well, all right, that's not  _technically_ true. In reality, his mind provides him with 1,342 potential excuses in a span of two seconds, which he then proceeds to vet based on their objective logic and the probability of them being believed by Lena specifically. None of them break his 50% minimum standard, so discards them.  _All of them._ One after the other after the other until there are no ideas left, the process leaving his mind historically,  _horrifically_  blank _.)_

Querl has been affectionately called a ‘ _shitty liar’—_ or some variation thereof—by more than one Legionnaire in the past, and it's a sentiment that, today, he’s regrettably inclined to agree with. Improvisation, much like facetiousness, has always been notoriously difficult for him to grasp. And this situation is a perfect example of that particular weakness.

Using one of his spare trains of thought, he takes a moment to bemoan the ridiculous ‘secret identity’ trend that seems to be so popular here in the 21st century. The Legion has never bothered with such things, and as a result, the 31st century public knows exactly who Brainiac 5 is. His identity—and thus, his _ancestry_ —is no secret, a fact he's never found himself even remotely grateful for until today.

 _All this subterfuge is far too exhausting,_  Querl thinks. He could never stand to do this on a daily basis. He has no idea how  _Kara_ does it on a daily basis.

Speaking of Kara…

“She—that is, Kara…uh, Kara and I, you see, we…” he stammers, floundering. Lena continues to stare at him, suspicions clearly growing. _Oh Sprock, this is a disaster—_

“Oh! Brainy! There you are!”

Querl sighs in relief as Kara hurries towards him and Lena, appearing from somewhere across the room. He had calculated only a 54.653% likelihood that she would happen to hear him say her name with her superhuman hearing and come find him. It seems, for once, that luck is on his side as well as the numbers. 

Kara stumbles to a stop, always mindful of her clumsy persona, and nearly knocks into his side in the process. She grabs his upper arm to steady herself.

Lena looks from Querl to Kara, then back to Querl, eyes narrowing. “So… _what_ is going on here, exactly?”

Querl, in turn, looks at Kara, and something in his face must be silently pleading  _HELP ME,_ because she jumps in immediately, rescuing him once more.

“He’s, uh…taking me out!” she says, and Querl stiffens when she leans against him and all but  _clings_ onto his arm. She smiles widely at Lena. “You know…to lunch! Which is…” Her eyes dart to the clock on the wall. “Which is now!”

Lena looks between the two of them again, her suspicious gaze dissolving, until she seems to be wearing a different expression entirely. Her red-painted lips pull into a smile, which rapidly grows into a grin, full of teeth.

“Oh, _really?”_ she says, and Querl has a distinct feeling that he’s missing something here—some crucial aspect of 21st century culture that he has yet to learn. Lena’s voice is downright conspiratorial when she asks, “You mean, like on a  _date?”_

There’s a pause, during which Querl opens his mouth to speak, to simply ask  _what,_   _exactly_ , is going on here, but Kara interrupts before he can.

“Yep!  _Yes_.” She nods emphatically, first at Lena, and then at Querl. He reluctantly mirrors the gesture. “ _Exactly_  like…ha, like a date.”

And then she lets go of his arm, and  _grabs his hand instead_.

Something inside of Querl short-circuits at the contact. It feels like his heart has missed a beat—but that’s impossible, because a swift internal scan tells him that there is nothing wrong with his heart.

He isn’t given time to dwell on it, because Kara is already walking back towards the elevator, practically dragging him along. She continues talking to Lena as she goes, saying, “Anyway, we should probably get going. Lunch break’s only so long and all that, you know?” She laughs, and while Querl knows that the the sound is being forced out, he doubts Lena can tell.

Kara is  _very_ good at this.

“Alright,” Lena says, now looking more amused than anything else, her lips pressed together as if to stifle laughter. She calls after them one final time: “You kids have fun!”

This utterly baffling statement is accompanied by an equally baffling  _wink_.

Kara laughs again, significantly more stilted than before, now actively shoving a stumbling and very confused Querl into the elevator. “Haha, we will!” 

The elevator doors close behind them with another  _ding_ , and then finally, mercifully, they are alone. Querl stands stock-still, processing, as Kara takes several steps away and breathes deeply, eyes closed. She spends a moment smoothing out her sweater, inhales, exhales, and then jerks back to alertness and whirls to face him, eyes snapping wide behind her glasses.

“Brainy!” she gasps, sounding like she’s only just now registered the fact that he’s actually _there_ , standing in front of her. Like everything before was driven by pure instinct. A matter of survival. “What are you  _doing_  here? Did Alex send you? What’s going on?”

“Forgive my lack of cultural awareness," he says, in lieu of answering her, "but what was the context of that conversation between you and Lena Luthor? Because I think I may have misunderstood something...”

Kara waves a hand between them, dismissive. “Don’t worry about it. It wasn’t anything important.”

“But I—”

“ _Brainy_ ,” she says, sharper this time, and Querl can see the moment when Kara falls away, and Supergirl takes her place. She grabs his shoulders, leveling him with a hard stare. All business. “ _Why_  are you here? What’s wrong?”

He blinks, reshuffling his priorities, and recites the information that Alex had originally told him to relay: “There is a situation downtown—a bank robbery—and due to the use of currently unidentified alien technology, all nearby electronics and communications have failed. There are hostages involved. The DEO requires Supergirl’s presence to—”

Before he can finish, the elevator  _dings_ again, and he can’t help but flinch when Kara—no,  _Supergirl_ —flies through the barely-open elevator doors, discharging a blast of air in her wake. She zooms out of the building, a living blur, before soaring up into the sky and quickly disappearing from sight.

Up, up, and away.

Querl sighs, and automatically moves to tidy his hair— _again_ —as he exits the elevator and heads outside.He squints up at the harmless cumulus clouds floating high above him, moving so slowly in comparison to Supergirl, and nearly smiles—until he abruptly remembers his own metaphorical storm cloud. The uncanny symptoms. The…fear?

_Irrational. Likely a fluke. Nothing to be truly concerned about._

And yet the feeling still lingers in the back of his mind, curled like a venomous snake, threatening to strike at a moment's notice. 

Querl tears his gaze away from the sky, his hands curling into frustrated fists at his side. His flight ring catches the sunlight, flashing gold, and he swallows thickly.

This time, he decides, he’s going to _walk_ back to the DEO. 

Just this once.

(If nothing else, a walk will give him plenty of time to ponder that odd exchange between Kara and Lena. Perhaps some supplementary research is in order...)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I feel the need to mention that Brainy's unusual reaction to flying, which I've introduced here, might read as a bit odd right now, but it WILL make sense eventually, I swear. (Actually, come to think of it, the explanation for it is kinda already there in the fic's summary and tags, soooo...)
> 
> Anyway, feel free to leave a kudos/comment if you want, and let me know your thoughts so far! :)
> 
> -
> 
> UP NEXT: _Supergirl with a headache is one thing. Supergirl with a headache and an escaped criminal still on the loose is quite another. Needless to say, it hasn't been a great day._


	2. Chapter 2

Kara flops into an uncomfortable DEO chair with a heavy sigh, not even bothering to rearrange her cape from where she’s sitting on it. She shuts her eyes and rubs at her temples, trying to dispel the last of the electrical attack she’d been hit with earlier. Apparently, the alien weapons used by the bank robbers could not only disrupt inanimate electronics like cell phones, but also the electrical impulses in the brain, resulting in… well, a somewhat irritating headache for her, and debilitating migraines for everyone else in the bank.

Due to the distracting effects of the weapons, one of the thieves had even managed to slip away with a duffle bag full of cash. Now, this might not seem like such a big deal in the grand scheme of things, but given how good things have been going for Kara—and especially Kara-as-Supergirl—lately, it feels like a particularly hard blow. All the confidence that's been steadily building for months, ever since she settled things with Mon-El, defeated Reign, and saved the future? _Poof!_

Basically, Supergirl with a headache is one thing.

Supergirl with a headache _and_ an escaped criminal still on the loose is quite another.

Needless to say, it hasn’t been a great day. But luckily, Kara’s managed to find a quiet, unused laboratory to relax in, at least for a few minutes.

She’s not aware of anyone standing beside her until they clear their throat.

Glancing between her fingers and squinting at the fluorescent laboratory lights, she takes stock of the familiar figure, with his dark hair and dark clothes and shiny gold Legion ring. He’s holding a stack of papers in his hands, with the clear intention of wanting to give them to her.

“Brainy,” she sighs, giving him a tired smile, “I know you work hard on the mission reports, I do, but I _really_ don’t feel like reading all about how I screwed up today, okay? I was _there_ , and I’ve got a headache right now, too—”

“This isn’t my mission report,” Brainy simply says, and when he shows no indication of leaving, Kara has no choice but to lower her hand and give him her full attention. As soon as she does, he steps forward and holds the papers—which are bound together like a small book—out to her expectantly.

“It’s a contract.”

Kara freezes, hands already closed around the end of the stack. “A what?”

“A contract,” Brainy repeats. He releases the papers and returns to his original spot, now standing with his hands steepled in front of him. “Otherwise known as a written or spoken agreement—”

“I know what a contract is, Brainy,” Kara says, not unkindly, just to stop him before he can really get going. “I just don’t get why… I mean, this is what?” She flips through the pages without actually reading them. “Twenty-five pages long?”

“Thirty-two, actually.”

“ _Right._  Yeah, so, what kind of contract is that long? And why do you even have a—I just don’t— _ughhh._ ” Kara slumps back into her chair with a groan.

Her head hurts _way_ too much to be dealing with this right now.

Brainy either ignores her noise of frustration or doesn’t realize what it means—probably the latter—and soldiers on ahead, unfazed. “Truthfully, this is not  _just_ a contract.” He sounds, of all things, _proud._ “It is also a compilation of all the research that I’ve completed today, organized by topically relevant sections and subsections for easier perusal. I’ve included behavioral strategies and rules for intimate contact—which, of course, can be amended with your input before you sign—along with a list of anecdotes that you can use for inspiration, as well as descriptions of popular dining locations throughout the city—”

“Woah, okay, slow down.” Kara waves a hand between them, the lengthy explanation dragging her attention back to him. “I’m missing something here. Go back.” She leans forward in her chair. “Start from the beginning. What is all this research _about?”_

Brainy blinks once before stating, as matter-of-factly as ever: “Why, twenty-first century courtship, of course. I believe it is commonly referred to as ‘dating’ in this time period?”

Kara stares at him blankly, and, for the first time in their conversation, Brainy begins to look uncertain. His eyes dart around the room nervously before settling back on her. “I… simply thought it would be best to have an agreed-upon plan. Was I incorrect in assuming this?”

“A plan for _what,_ Brainy?” Kara asks, voice sharpening, her confusion and headache finally getting the better of her. “What the hell are you _talking_ _about?”_

Brainy seems to deflate at her snappish tone, and for a moment, Kara feels a stab of guilt over ruining his good mood. That is, until he ekes out, “Our… fictitious romantic relationship?”

Kara rockets to her feet, clutching the thirty-two-page contract so tightly that she almost rips it in half.

“Our  _WHAT?!”_

To Brainy’s credit, he doesn't even flinch at the outburst, though his image-induced eyebrows do soar upwards in surprise. 

Usually, when Kara gets visibly upset, or angry enough to raise her voice, those at the DEO—with the sole exception of Alex—immediately start giving her a wider berth. DEO agents know better than most what Supergirl is capable of, after all, and so they stay far away from her and her anger, even if they logically know that she would never actually hurt them. It’s instinctive self-preservation, and Kara gets that. She tries not to be too bothered by it. 

She doesn’t always _succeed_ , but at least she tries.

But then there's Brainy, who always looks at her with admiration and trust, and never fear or disappointment, no matter what emotions she throws at him. Who has never, not once, judged her for expressing feelings other than happiness, as so many in the past have.

When he saw Kara blast her mind-prison door with enough heat vision to destroy the entire imaginary loft, he could have run for the hills, but instead he patiently talked her into solving her problems, like she hadn’t completely lost her shit in front of him a few minutes prior. He kept her, a complete stranger, company for _hours,_ helping her through an ordeal that would have been terrifying to deal with alone. An oasis of calm within her inner storm.

Kara hasn’t forgotten any of that, not a single moment of that unreal coma-day, and doubts she ever will. The whole experience is tied to her concept of Brainy just as he was once tied to her mind. 

And such a good first impression makes it very, very hard for her to stay mad at him for any real length of time.

After taking a second to calm down, the mess at CatCo from earlier that day comes back to her, and Kara understands what kind of miscommunication happened here. Or at least, she thinks she does. Mostly. 

She knows that Brainy means well. He _always_ means well. She knows this, and yet she can’t stop staring down at the verifiable _book_ in her hands, numbly reading the title over and over, unable to wrap her head around it:

_Research Notes & Contract Concerning the Fictitious Romantic Relationship Between Kara Zor-El Danvers and Querl Dox_

“I truly do not understand your confusion,” Brainy is saying, when Kara finally looks back up at him. His expression is rapidly shifting from uncertain to distressed, as he realizes that her reaction is not going to be the one he was expecting. “Kara, _you_ were the one who told Lena Luthor that we were in a romantic relationship. I was merely complying with _your_ plan!”

“Brainy, it wasn’t a plan!” Kara exclaims. “It wasn’t even an idea, really! It was just—it was just a little lie!”

“Yes, a lie that you told to your closest friend, whom you work with on a daily basis! One who is  _very_ invested in your personal life, and has shown in the past to take strong offense to being lied to! With those facts in mind, developing a prearranged strategy of approach for future cover stories seemed like the most obvious course of action to take!”

Okay. Well. He _does_ have a point there.

It's been months, and Lena still asks Kara about where she goes every time she disappears from work, and Kara knows that she only continues to get away with it because Lena is her best friend and trusts her almost implicitly, no matter how bad her excuses are. But that system can’t realistically last forever. Having a long-term, believable lie in place that she can use as a stable cover isn’t actually a bad idea. But still… _fake-dating?_

_What is this, a particularly cheesy romcom? People don't actually do that kind of thing in real life!_

Kara shakes her head, mouth opening and closing like a fish, heat steadily creeping up her neck and over her cheeks at the thought of fake-dating  _Brainy_ , of all people. She can't even begin to picture it. Not because there's anything _wrong_ with him, per say—quite the opposite, actually—but because he's her  _friend._ He's not... he's not anything _else._

_Definitely not!_

“Brainy, this is…” She trails off, not at all sure how to say what she wants to say without completely crushing him. “This is… super flattering. Really. I can’t believe how much _work_ you put into this, just to give me a good cover story to tell Lena... but I just don't think—”

“It was the least I could do, after you stepped in and rescued me from an otherwise humiliating situation this morning, when I failed to produce a satisfactory lie to explain your departure from CatCo,” Brainy says, swiftly interrupting her before she can finish. “I would like to thank you for that, by the way. You really saved... my ass?” He arches one brow. “Is that the correct usage of the phrase?" 

He’s trying to make her smile on purpose for once, and even though Kara knows that it’s a deliberate distraction, she can’t help but do so, her mouth splitting into a grin. Earth swears just sound _wrong_ coming out of Brainy’s mouth, in the most entertaining way possible. (She makes a mental note to teach him some more in the future. She can’t wait to see Alex’s face the first time Brainy says ‘fuck’ in front of her.)

“Yeah, it is,” she says with a laugh, then eyes him curiously. “Who taught you that one?”

“Oh—Winn. Before he left.”

“Right, of course he did,” Kara mutters. Then she groans, eyes squeezing shut, and presses the heel of her palm against the side of her head to combat a sudden, sharp pain. The adrenaline rush that had momentarily overpowered her headache was clearly fading, leaving it pounding in time with her heartbeat once again. 

This time, Brainy notices.

“Are you alright?” he asks, stepping closer to her. His hands hover, concerned, but don’t actually touch her. “Are you hurt?”

“No, no,” Kara mumbles. “It’s just a stupid headache caused by those electrical disrupter things that the bank robbers had. I shouldn’t even be complaining—I know everyone else got hit way worse than I did.”

“Yes, but unlike everyone else, you are not accustomed to feeling physically ill, and do not respond to ordinary painkillers,” Brainy reminds her, and the headache must be worse than she thought, because the kindness in his voice causes an emotional lump to form in her throat, making it hard to swallow. She doesn’t resist when he eases his contract out of her hand and places it on a nearby table, only reacting when he says, “How about you sit down and recompile your thoughts from before I interrupted you, while I assemble something that can help?”  

“Brainy, you don’t have to—” Kara starts to protest, but he’s already walking to the opposite end of the unused lab, surveying the outdated medical equipment and other junk stored there. She has no choice but to sit. He  _hmm’s_  as he selects what he needs, before coming back and dropping a pile of tools and parts onto the table with a loud  _clang_. 

Kara winces at the noise, ears ringing.

“Apologies.” Brainy grimaces. “I could have done that more quietly.”  

“It’s fine,” Kara sighs, slumping in her chair, but watches warily as he retrieves a final, larger machine and rolls it over to her. “What’s that?”

“I believe it is an electroencephalography, or EEG, device.” Brainy pries a panel off of the machine with a screwdriver, and begins yanking out the internal wiring. “Rudimentary, of course, compared to the technology I’m familiar with, but it  _is_  designed to detect electrical activity in the brain. If I reconfigure it, perhaps I can actually  _repair_  the disruptions to your neurological pathways, rather than simply detect them.” He glances at Kara, and, faced with her puzzled expression, clarifies, “It should rid you of your headache.”

“Oh.”  

Kara settles down, resting with a hand pressed to her pained temple, and looks on hazily as Brainy digs into the EEG machine, inserting new pieces of tech and rewiring what’s already there, his brows furrowed in concentration. At some point, Kara realizes that she's never really taken the time to watch Brainy work before—every other time he’s done science stuff with her nearby, it’s been during moments of crisis. Kara knows that he’s been spending most of his free time lately working in his personal lab onsite, but come to think of it, she’s never actually been there.

She’s never actually seen Brainy just be _Brainy,_ as himself, and not a Legionnaire on a life-or-death mission. Really, she hardly knows him at all. She has no idea what his likes and dislikes are, what his favorite color is, or what his laugh sounds like.

She should probably make an effort to change that.

There’s something almost soothing about watching him now. His movements are swift, yet precise, as if he knows exactly where the next piece will go before he even picks it up. His eyes, though, are erratic, flickering up and down the machine, then over to his pile of parts and back again. Constantly analyzing. They seem to move independently of his body, sometimes, but together it all forms its own rhythm. It _flows._

 _It’s like a dance,_ Kara thinks, eyelids flickering, dozing to the sounds of buzzing electricity and metallic tinkering.  _Like music._

The world around her goes blurry, then dim.

She’s first brought back to awareness when she feels someone sticking something onto her temple. Then a warm hand gently slides under her chin, trying to tilt her head and gain access to the other side. Her eyes flutter open, and she gasps, startled by how _close_ Brainy suddenly is.

He’s hovering directly in front of her, his wide eyes dominating her vision, close enough for her to see sparse flecks of amber in their otherwise dark depths. He looks as startled as she feels—like a deer caught in oncoming headlights—and of course, that’s _his_ hand on her chin. The other one is holding some kind of sticky pad. Everything makes sense again.

“I’m sorry,” he says, nearly whispering. Kara’s never heard his voice so soft. “I didn't mean to wake you. I just need to attach the other electrode.” He holds the sticky pad, which Kara realizes is actually an electrode, up a bit higher, showing it to her.

“S’alright, I wasn’t sleeping,” Kara mumbles, though she feels very much like she’s just been woken up from a nap. She sits up fully, shaking the cobwebs out of her head, and offers her bare temple to Brainy with the smile of a good patient. “Go ahead.”

He hesitates, then complies, pressing the electrode to her skin and reaching to switch on the machine.

“You may feel a slight electrical current…”

Kara’s eyes slide closed as a pleasant tingling sensation spreads across her forehead, then begins traveling backwards across her scalp. Her headache instantly diminishes.

“Ohhh,” she sighs in relief. “That’s _much_ better. _Thank you_.”

“You are very welcome,” comes Brainy’s reply, clipped with formality, though the words are softened by the hint of a pleased smile that he’s wearing. Seemingly satisfied with his work, he crouches down to retrieve the leftover parts and tools, placing them back onto the table and starting to reorganize them.

Kara, meanwhile, finds herself reaching for the abandoned thirty-two-page contract sitting on a table to her other side. She’d almost forgotten about it. She looks down at the papers, first running her fingers across the top one, and then thumbing through a few pages. Skimming. Absorbing. 

It feels wrong to bring it up now, after Brainy worked so hard to help her with her headache, but she can't  _not_ bring it up, either. Leaving the conversation open-ended, not correcting the mistake, would just make things worse in the long run. Kara's learned this the hard way, though usually from the other end of the conversation—usually  _she's_ the clueless alien, doing something socially inappropriate. 

She has a sudden, newfound respect for Eliza's careful tact during her teenage years.

“So, about this contract thing…” she says slowly, and immediately feels bad when Brainy freezes in place for a moment, before jerkily continuing his cleanup, his eyes downcast, pointedly looking anywhere but at her. She bites her lip. “Brainy, I just think—”

"Based on the status of your brainwaves, I estimate that you will only need to remain attached to the machine for ten to fifteen more minutes, at which point your headache will be cured, and you may turn it off and disconnect yourself from it," Brainy says, interrupting her _again_. "You should not require my assistance to do this." He turns his back on her, shoulders stiff, and begins carrying an armful of parts back across the room, clearly intending to return them to where he found them, while also effectively ending their conversation before it can begin. _Again_.

This time, Kara decides that she’s not going to let that slide. 

“Hey!” she exclaims, and moves to chase after him, only to be yanked back by the EEG machine she’s still hooked up to. “Dammit!” she hisses, along with a few other choice words in Kryptonian, before grabbing onto the machine and awkwardly dragging it along behind her.

“Hey,” she says again, softer this time, when she reaches Brainy. He’s methodically placing the spare parts, one-by-one, back into the box he took them from. His eyes flicker in her direction, before swiftly looking down again.

“Can I just say what I wanted to say? Please?”

His movements slow to a stop, and then he sighs, sounding defeated. Finally, he acquiesces with a nod.

Kara takes a breath. “Okay. So, first off, I meant it when I said I was flattered by all this. I’ve been Supergirl for almost four years now, and no one’s _ever_ put this much thought or effort into helping me keep my identity a secret before.” She hopes that the compliment will cheer Brainy up, but not this time. He still won’t even look at her—though she can't tell if he's angry, or just plain upset. She's not sure which option makes her feel worse. “I just think this whole elaborate fake-dating plan is kinda…  _too much_ , you know? Well-intentioned, but… a little over the top?” 

“You are saying that I overreacted.” 

Kara winces. "Well, I wouldn't really put it  _that_ way..."

"No," Brainy says, mouth settling into a frown, brows drawing together. "You should, because you're right. I did overreact. I realize that now." 

The confession is so _un-Brainy-like_ that it stuns Kara into silence. Since when does Brainy actually admit to being _wrong?_

"Truthfully, this is... not the first time something like this has happened," he continues, grimacing a little, his fingers tapping nervously on the edge of the box in front of him. "Such an 'elaborate plan,' as you called it, is in fact the response I typically have to situations that I am unfamiliar with. In this case… a romantic relationship.” Kara has never seen Brainy blush before, but he does now, the tops of his cheeks slowly flushing with color. It instantly makes him look more relatable, more human. “While I did misinterpret your intentions and...  _eagerness_ to a certain degree, I also have a habit of overcompensating in general. I hope you can understand, I didn't mean to upset you. I simply do not enjoy being… being…”

“Caught off guard?” Kara suggests gently, supplying an appropriate modern phrase, and Brainy nods stiffly. Finally, he glances back up at her, eyes fathomlessly dark. She’s too far away, this time, to see the amber flecks in them. 

“Yes,” he agrees. “It was the  _unpredictability_ of the situation—the fact that I did not immediately know how to react to what I was presented with—which prompted my response of over-preparation. I didn't want to risk experiencing that feeling again, should the situation repeat itself, which I believed it would. Hence... the plan.”

Kara smiles, sympathetic. “You do know that _life_ can be kind of unpredictable, right?”

Brainy sniffs, and there’s an undeniable hint of haughtiness in his voice, in the upward tilt of his chin, as he says, “It doesn’t have to be, with the right research and calculations. Provided there is enough appropriate data to compile, almost anything in life can be predicted.”

 _Except for me making you my fake boyfriend, apparently,_ Kara can’t help but think. But she bites her tongue, mostly just glad to finally hear Brainy sounding like himself again.

Even if ‘himself’ comes with a touch of arrogance here and there.

_Well, hey, nobody’s perfect._

A few strands of Brainy’s hair must have fallen out of place while he was working on the EEG machine, and he takes a moment now to push them back with his hand—a nervous tic, probably. One stray piece lingers, brushing his temple, when he’s done, and Kara has to fight the neat freak in her that tells her to tuck it behind his ear herself.

She rests a hand on his shoulder instead, and that gesture by itself is odd enough that it immediately attracts Brainy’s attention, his eyes snapping first to the point of contact, then back to Kara’s face.

“Look, to be totally honest, I was just going to tell Lena on Monday that the date didn’t go well. That we… uh, broke up, or whatever, and decided to just be friends.” She shrugs. “No fake relationship required. Do you get why I thought the contract was a bit unnecessary now?"

Brainy looks incredulous. “You can do that? End a relationship, just like that?” he asks, then shakes his head. “No. It cannot be that easy.”

Kara can’t help but laugh. Apparently, his extensive research had only covered how to  _maintain_ a relationship, and not how to end one. “It  _definitely_ is. Especially early on. People go on bad dates all the time! Trust me, I’ve been on _tons._ So don't even worry about the whole contract thing, okay?" She squeezes his shoulder reassuringly. "It's really not a big deal. And hey, look at it this way.” She holds out the papers, and after a pause, Brainy reluctantly takes them back. “Maybe all this research you did can still be useful—maybe you can use it to get a  _real_ date!” 

Brainy then proceeds to stare at her, expression completely unreadable, for so long that Kara starts to wonder if he might actually be buffering, frozen mid-thought, like a computer. An image springs to mind of two tiny spinning cursors hovering behind each of his eyes.

Then he blinks, snapping out of it, and Kara's mouth drops open when he turns and wordlessly tosses his research into a nearby trash bin. 

_“Brainy!”_

“I am not looking for a genuine romantic relationship at the moment, actually,” he says, maddeningly nonchalant. “And even if I were, I have all of my research memorized, so I doubt the physical copy would be much use to me at all." His lips twitch, a ghost of a smile, at a thought that Kara isn't privy to. "I appreciate the suggestion, though.” He inclines his head, politely dismissive, and the action is so completely removed from the intimacy of the conversation they've just had that it can't be anything other than purposeful. A deliberate distancing. "Now, if you'll excuse me, I really should return to work." 

Clasping his hands behind his back, Brainy begins walking out of the lab, only turning around when Kara calls, "Uh... Brainy?"

"Yes?" 

He's still walking—just slower now, and backwards. 

"Aren't you forgetting something?" Kara asks, awkwardly waving her hands around herself, her head, the electrodes stuck to it, and the machine that she's still attached to. "What am I supposed to do with all this?"

"I already told you. In..." Brainy looks skyward, doing the math, "precisely 72 seconds, you can turn the machine off and remove the electrodes. I trust you can handle that on your own." He smiles at her now, but it doesn't reach his eyes the same way it had the day they first met, and before Kara can say anything, can say  _I would still rather have you stay with me,_ he's turned and disappeared around a corner, out of her immediate sight. 

Kara deflates with a sigh.  _I probably could've handled that better,_ she thinks, though she has no idea  _how_. 

Brainy had said 72 seconds, but that was a few seconds ago,so Kara counts to 60 in her head instead. Then she sets about switching off the repurposed EEG machine and pulling the electrodes off of her temples, wincing as the pads cling to her skin and catch on her hair, even though they don't actually hurt.

She's been so conditioned to act human over the years that sometimes, without thinking about it, she finds herself pretending even when no one is watching. Every time she catches herself doing this, and has to remind herself that she _isn't actually human_ , it sends an uncomfortable sting of loss through her heart. Loss of her planet, her people, and—in those brief moments of forgetfulness—her very identity. 

She shakes herself out of it. Even though she can get lost in pretending sometimes, she always manages to find the real Kara, still there, alive and well within the fake one. _After all, the best lies are ones based in truth._  And there's no point in dwelling on the other things, the ones she can't change. 

_Not everything can be fixed with time travel. Or should be._

But speaking of people who travel through time...

Leaving the machine in the corner of the lab with the rest of the storage, Kara's eyes drift back to the trash bin, and the discarded plan sitting inside it. She chews on her lip, thinking, and then bends down, cape pooling on the floor, and plucks the packet of papers out, rescuing it from its inevitable destruction.

Sure, she has no intention of forcing Brainy to fake-date her as a cover, and never did, but Kara still feels bad about him throwing all his hard work away, no matter how much he acts like it doesn't matter. She knows that it does. Everything that Brainy does matters more to him than he lets on. 

 _And you never know,_  Kara muses to herself, fingers lightly tracing over the title, slowing over the words _'Relationship Between Kara Zor-El Danvers and Querl Dox.'_

_Maybe it'll come in handy someday._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A small PSA: In true CW fashion, 99% of the technological stuff in this fic is bullshit pseudoscience that doesn't actually exist IRL. (For instance, an EEG machine is a real thing that exists, but the way Brainy 'reconfigures' it in this chapter is not even remotely possible.) Since this is a show about alien superheroes, I guess it doesn't _really_ matter, but as someone with a STEM degree I still feel obligated to say it lol. 
> 
> Also, the characters might think that this whole fake-dating thing is over and done with, but welp, that's obviously not the case, so don't even worry about that. Hah. (Let's just say that 'someday' is going to come a lot sooner than Kara thinks it will...) 
> 
> Hopefully y'all are still enjoying this! Kudos/comments are always appreciated if you wanna give feedback. :) 
> 
> \--
> 
> UP NEXT: _Of course, unlike Kara, who can postpone her talk with Lena until Monday, Supergirl doesn’t get weekends off. Ever._


	3. Chapter 3

Of course, unlike Kara, who can postpone her talk with Lena until Monday, Supergirl doesn’t get weekends off. Ever.

Bright and early on Sunday morning, Alex calls her in for an emergency DEO meeting, so off she flies.

Standing around the DEO's circular command center, Kara can’t help but notice how much smaller their team feels without J’onn and Winn, not to mention Mon-El and Imra. Now it’s just her, Alex, and Brainy—and Vasquez, who hovers slightly off to the side, not quite included. Despite knowing that J’onn is only a phone call away, and that Winn plans to come back someday, their absences still feel like gaping holes in her chest.

Nothing is the same anymore, and Kara has never done well with change.

She glances in Brainy's direction, but he doesn’t meet her eyes. His attention is firmly glued down onto the tablet he’s holding, as he types with one hand faster than she's ever typed with two.

“Okay!” Alex claps her hands, getting everyone's attention. “So, _this_ was discovered at dawn in a motel room downtown. Brace yourselves.” She presses a button on her tablet, and an image appears on the large monitor behind her. Several gasps echo around the room from the newer recruits.

“Oh my God,” Kara says, covering her mouth with her hand. Even Brainy looks taken aback, and swiftly averts his eyes.

The image is of a corpse, which in and of itself isn’t necessarily shocking. Kara has, unfortunately, seen many corpses over the past few years—it’s become a hazard of the job. No, what’s shocking is the way this corpse is positioned, with the body lying stomach-down... and the face staring up at them, eyes vacant with death.

Kara recognizes that face immediately as belonging to the missing bank robber from two days ago, whose ski mask she had ripped off right before he blasted her in the face with his alien disrupter gun. Someone—or _something_ —has snapped his neck so completely that they left his head turned 180 degrees around like an owl. A freakish, unnatural owl-person.

“Do we have any idea who did this?” Kara asks, once she finds her voice, aiming for casual and not quite getting there. “Could it have been a human?”

She doesn’t want to say that she _hopes_ it’s a human, but given the recent anti-alien sentiments that have been cropping up around the city lately… well. It goes without saying that extraterrestrials could really do without the negative publicity right now.

To her dismay, Alex and Brainy both shake their heads. They start speaking simultaneously, only to awkwardly cut off and stare at each other—a mild butting of heads that’s been happening ever since Brainy joined the team full-time and Alex was promoted to Director. Kara eyes them warily, bracing for an argument that, so far, hasn’t actually happened.

“No,” Alex eventually says, taking charge. “This couldn’t be the work of a human, even a strong one. Snapping a person’s neck isn’t as easy as it looks in the movies. Even with proper training, an average human would struggle to exert enough bare-handed force to actually kill someone, never mind… do _that_.” She gestures vaguely at the screen, pointedly not looking at it.

“Correct. To be precise, between 1,000 and 1,250 foot-pounds of force is typically required to fracture a human neck in a manner that results in death.” That’s Brainy, words clipped and tone detached—simply reciting information, as if they aren’t all talking about murder. “Humans would need significant leverage in order to produce such a force, and taking the angle required to sever the spinal cord and the muscles of the neck into consideration as well, I also conclude that it would be quite impossible for an ordinary human to accomplish the deed pictured before us.”

“ _Exactly_ what I just said...” Alex grumbles under her breath, too low for Brainy to hear—but of course, Kara always hears everything. For the sake of keeping the peace, she pretends she didn’t.

Instead, she nods solemnly and looks down at the table, feeling defeated. “So… we’re looking for an alien, then.”

Alex and Brainy share uncannily similar sympathetic expressions, and that’s all the answer she needs.

“Alright,” Kara says, taking a deep breath. “Lay it on me then. What kinds of aliens are capable of producing this kind of force on Earth?” 

“Well, Kryptonians and Daxamites,” Brainy says immediately. His eyes flicker towards Kara, and he balks a bit at the look she's giving him, backtracking. “Though both of those are extremely unlikely candidates, of course… for obvious reasons.”

Alex sighs. “Anything else?”

Brainy then proceeds to list off a number of alien species, some of which Kara has never even heard of before. He gets to around twenty-five, counting them off on his fingers, before Alex raises a hand to stop him.

“Okay, that’s enough.” She pinches the bridge of her nose. “I think we get the idea—there’s a lot. That doesn’t really give us any helpful answers.”

“Then maybe we’re asking the wrong questions,” Kara says, forcing herself to look at the grisly photo once more, studying it closely this time. She points at the robber-turned-victim’s broken neck. “Like, what’s that?”

“Looks like a tattoo…” Alex mutters, moving closer to the screen and squinting.

“Can you zoom in? Or enhance it, or something?”

Alex taps a few buttons, and then shakes her head. “No, it’s too distorted to get a clear image. You know, from the…” She awkwardly mimes a neck being snapped, then grimaces. “The _twisting_.”

“Give me ten minutes and the most advanced processors in your possession, and I can reconstruct it.”

Both Danvers sisters turn to look at Brainy, who’s standing with steepled hands, staring intently at the mystery tattoo onscreen.

“Are you sure?” asks Alex, eyebrows raised.

“Of course I am,” Brainy replies without hesitation, blinking at her like the very question is ridiculous. Kara can’t help but feel impressed in the face of his confidence, even though nothing has actually been done yet. Brainy’s… _Brainy-ness_ tends to have that effect on her.

“Well, alright then.” Alex nods, the matter settled. “Vasquez, hook Agent Dox up with one of those fancy new L-Corp desktops, and we’ll reconvene here in ten minutes.”

* * *

 

In fact, it only takes Querl 7.35 minutes to complete the image restoration. But then, the ten-minute estimate he’d given Director Danvers—Alex—had been purposefully skewed high, to account for the ancient technology he knew he’d be using.

“I present… the original tattoo design.” He hits a key on his keyboard, and the reconstructed image flies up onto the big screen. Multiple pairs of eyes turn to look at it. “Unfortunately, there is no clear text or recognizable figures present to indicate its meaning. Perhaps it can be used as an identifying mark, to determine the victim’s identity, but—”

“No, no, I _know_ this. I’ve _seen_ this design before,” Alex says. She begins typing on her own tablet, looking progressively more excited. “If I can just… hah! Got it!”

“Got what?” asks Kara, moving to look over her sister’s shoulder. After a moment’s hesitation, Querl follows suit and joins them, careful not to touch Alex as he leans and looks.

“It's the FBI’s Organized Crime Database. See here?” Alex points at the screen. “That’s the same tattoo. It’s a common _Bratva_ tattoo.”

“A what?”

Querl can’t help but feel relieved when Kara asks the question, because that means he doesn’t have to ask it himself, and thus reveal his own ignorance unnecessarily. He hates doing that.

“ _Bratva_. It means ‘brotherhood’ in Russian.” Alex’s eyebrows furrow, which must mean that this is serious. “It’s another name for the Russian mafia.”

Kara’s eyes go wide, as she clearly understands the implications of what Alex just said, and Querl feels himself falling behind again. It’s a feeling akin to sliding down a perfectly smooth wall, hands desperately scrambling for purchase to catch oneself, but finding nothing—a horrible, unfamiliar sensation for one of his intellectual level. Even though he knows, logically, that there are always going to be aspects of this time period that he simply cannot be expected to possess prior knowledge of, Querl doubts he’ll ever get used to the feeling.

He debates with himself for a moment, weighing the pros and cons of addressing the issue, before finally asking, “What does that word mean? _Mafia_. I am not familiar with the term.” He isn’t particularly clear on the cultural significance of _Russian_ , either, beyond the fact that it denotes a country of origin, but doesn’t want to make things any worse for himself. Simply asking the one question is humiliating enough.

Alex and Kara share a look, their eyes briefly flickering towards each other in a nonverbal conversation. Reading body language is not Querl's strongest suit, but it's clear enough that the look has something do to with him. His shoulders stiffen, just a tad. Automatically defensive.

“Mafias, or mobs, are a kind of organized crime syndicate,” Alex says to him. “They deal in illegally traded goods and services, everything from drugs, to weapons, to… to people even, sometimes. Real bad news.”

“ _Oh_. You are referring to black market traders.” Querl finds a handhold on the metaphorical wall, and clings to it, halting his free-falling descent. “Those exist in the future, though on much larger, intergalactic scales.” His mouth settles into a frown. “They’ve created many problems for the Legion over the years, but I was not aware that such groups were so prevalent on Earth in this time period.”

“Guess the _Godfather_ movies don’t make it to the future,” Kara mutters to no one in particular. She doesn’t sound particularly upset about this fact, so Querl assumes the movies must not be very good ones. How could they be, if Kara dislikes them?

“This is worse than typical black market dealers,” Alex explains further. “Mobs are closely knit and very secretive, loyal to each other like a family, and they’ll extort, torture, or kill anyone they have to in order to get what they want. Even their own members, if they screw up.”

“Then it seems their loyalty to each other only extends so far,” Querl muses, voice low. “That doesn’t sound much like a family to me.”

No one responds to his statement, though something indefinable in Kara’s eyes softens as she looks at him.

“Do you think that’s why our bank robber was killed? Because he… failed?” she asks after a pause, turning to Alex. Back to business. “And since when is there mob activity in National City anyway?”

“It’s a definite possibility. You saw his face, which meant he was compromised, even with the security cameras disrupted. My guess is that it was an inside job—tying up loose ends. And for the record, there’s always been mob activity in the city.” Alex shrugs. “We just haven’t dealt with them because it’s not our jurisdiction. As long as the mob doesn’t mess with alien stuff, they’re a job for the FBI—the _real_ FBI. But if the Russians are dealing in alien weapons now…”

“Then they just _became_ our job,” Kara finishes for her, standing up straighter at the first hint of a real mission.

When she’s wearing civilian clothes, as she is now, it’s usually a simple matter for Querl to separate Kara, the person, from Supergirl, the heroic figure he’s idolized since he was a child. Maintaining this mental separation makes interacting with her much easier. But when she stands like _that_ —her chin held high, blue eyes hardened like steel behind her glasses, radiating confidence like a burning star—he’s forced to acknowledge that Kara Danvers and Supergirl are not separate entities. They’re one in the same.

And his lifelong idol is _right there_ , standing before him. Living, breathing. _Existing_. The awareness buzzes beneath his skin, and causes his heart to thump enthusiastically against his ribcage.

 _A completely illogical reaction,_ he thinks, mentally _tsking_ at himself.

It had been much easier for Querl to admire Supergirl in the 31st century, when she was merely an ideal to aspire to. Now, working beside her every day, his admiration has started to feel more and more like a ridiculous _crush_ , the likes of which he hasn’t harbored since he was an adolescent. Over the past few weeks, he’s done his utmost to stamp those physical responses out, but they still crop up from time to time against his will and better judgment.

Like now.

He shakes himself out of the haze of _feelings_ , swallowing past the sudden dryness in his mouth. He can’t just stand here, basking in the glow of Supergirl’s heroism—he has a job to do, the same as every other DEO agent, Kara included. Maintaining professionalism is key.

_Anything else would be highly inappropriate, and therefore unacceptable._

Kara and Alex are still talking, discussing National City’s apparently widespread mafia underground, when Querl focuses back onto their words. He’s not particularly worried about what he missed—even if his mind isn’t actively processing what he hears, the conversation will always be stored in his extensive memory banks, and he can review its contents later. One of the many advantages of an AI core.

“If we want answers about where the Russians got their fancy new disrupters, and who this alien hit man is that they're sending to clean up their messes,” Alex is saying, “then this is the guy we should be talking to.”

A new photo appears on the big screen, depicting a middle-aged man in a suit, with dark hair and a graying beard, walking along a busy sidewalk. His visage would be nothing out of the ordinary, if not for the three other men flanking his back and sides, all wearing long overcoats—perfect for concealing weapons.

“Can we?” Kara looks at her sister curiously. “Talk to him?”

“No,” Alex says flatly. 

“Right. Just checking.”

“This is Anatoli Knyazev,” Alex continues. “The current _Bratva_ captain here in the city. He’s pretty new on the scene—only showed up a few weeks ago—but I’d guarantee that nothing happens within the Russian crime circles that he doesn’t know about.”

“If he is relatively new to the city, then who was the previous captain?” Querl asks. “And what happened to him? Perhaps he could be useful.”

Alex snorts, though nothing on her face suggests amusement. “He’s dead. Blunt force trauma—someone beat him to death. After torturing him, of course.”

"Geez," Kara grimaces.

“Yeah,” Alex agrees with a nod. “These guys may be human—or at least, the ones we know about are—but they’re still dangerous. They’re professionals. Career criminals. We _can’t_ underestimate them. Got it?”

Querl bobs his head in an affirmative gesture. He’s the only one within hearing distance who does so.

Kara begins to pace, taking two steps in one direction before turning around and walking the other way. “So… if we can’t talk to this captain guy directly, then what should we do?”

Alex takes a breath. “Well… I might have an idea. But we have to be careful. Crafty. We have to gather intel from them without them _knowing_ that we’re gathering it—”

“You want us to spy on them.”

Alex turns and looks at him, her expression indicating surprise. Querl can’t help but cross his arms, indignant in the face of her apparent shock—her intentions had been easily calculable, and therefore obvious. 

"Uh, yeah. Basically." Alex blinks at him a few more times, then returns her attention to Kara. “Knyazev might be virtually untouchable, thanks to his wealth and a lack of evidence tying him to any actual crimes, but luckily he _is_ predictable. At least in some ways. For example…” She taps her tablet, and an overhead map of the city materializes. An address appears, and the map zooms in, highlighting a specific building in yellow. “He eats lunch at this restaurant twice a week, every Tuesday and Thursday. All we’d have to do is sit in there and listen to his conversations—but there’s a catch.”

“Which is…?”

Alex’s mouth twists, and Querl calculates that she’s most likely chewing on the inside of her cheek. “He eats in a special ‘VIP’ room, where it’s believed the _Bratva_ handles a lot of their money laundering deals. The doors are guarded, and they sweep for bugs, so there’s never been any way for the FBI to hear what goes on in there. But—”

“But we have something the FBI doesn't have,” Kara interrupts her. She grins, nearly bouncing in place. “We have me! Uh, I mean Supergirl.” She sobers, putting on a more serious, professional face. “We have Supergirl. And her super-hearing.”

“See, but that’s the thing. We don’t need Supergirl—we need the _opposite_ of Supergirl. We need someone unassuming. Inconspicuous. Someone that no criminal would ever suspect of being a government spy...”

“You need Kara Danvers,” Querl says, once again anticipating Alex's conclusion before she gets there, and Alex nods reluctantly. She doesn’t look thrilled about the idea.

“Okay, so, that’s fine, too! I can be ‘Kara Danvers: Super Spy’ just as easily as I can be Supergirl,” Kara says, full of her usual confidence.

“Oh, really?” Alex glances at Kara, arching a skeptical eyebrow. “Remind me, how good is your Russian, again? Because you’ll be listening to a lot of it.”

“Uhhh…” Kara winces, confidence dissolving. _“Так себе?”_

She makes a _so-so_ hand gesture in accompaniment, which translates the phrase well enough for Querl.

“Mhm. Great,” Alex mutters, eyes going skyward. “That’s… pretty much exactly what I expected.” She pinches the bridge of her nose, a gesture that Querl has often seen her perform during conversations with him. “You’re gonna need help… a lot of it.”

“Oh c’mon Alex, I don’t need a _babysitter_ —”

But Alex is already looking around the room. “Agent Jensen!” she calls out. One of the newer recruits looks up at the sound of his name. “You speak Russian, don’t you?”

The aforementioned Agent Jensen stands, stiff as a soldier, and nods once. “Yes, Director. I studied abroad in Moscow for years. I’m fluent.”

“Good. Then you’ll accompany Kara throughout this assignment.”

Jensen is no twelfth-level intellect, but he’s tall and broad-shouldered, with neatly trimmed blond hair and a jawline like chiseled marble. He’s also well-mannered, competent in the field, and popular with the other agents. 

And he’s smiling at Kara, clearly thrilled at the idea of working with her.

Querl instantly dislikes him, though he can’t determine a rational reason why that is.

“Hey, um… do I get _any_ say in this?” Kara sounds much less enthusiastic than Jensen looks, and Querl is absurdly relieved by that fact. “I mean, how exactly am I supposed to explain this? Spending so much time with _him_ ,” she gestures at Jensen, “to other people?” She doesn’t say _to Lena_ , but Querl knows that she’s thinking it. Lena Luthor is bound to notice Kara spending extensive amounts of her leisure time with a complete stranger.

Alex doesn’t seem to share Kara’s concerns. She shrugs, looking down and typing on her tablet. “Just say that you’re dating him. That should be cover enough.”

For 1.25 seconds, Querl forgets how to breathe. His eyes dart to Kara, only to find her equally frozen, staring back at him. He knows that she’s thinking about exactly the same thing he is, though sprock knows he’s tried his best to forget it over the past two days.

_“Uhh…”_

As if sensing the sudden tension, Alex looks up from her tablet, gaze darting between the two of them. Her eyes narrow dangerously.

“Alright, what is it?” she demands. “What did the two of you _do?”_

“Well, you see, the thing is… I don’t think that plan’s really gonna work, because, uh…”

_“Kara…”_

“Because I kind of, might’ve, already told Lena on Friday, in front of the whole office, that I was, uh, sort of… dating… Brainy?”

Alex stares, clearly at a loss for words, and Kara visibly cringes.

The control room falls silent. Every agent is looking at the three of them now, and though Querl is not the most adept at detecting the emotions of others, even he can feel the mortifying blend of shock and judgment permeating the room. It’s _suffocating_.

He wants nothing more than to sink into the floor and disappear from sight.

Instead of doing that, he turns to Alex, face carefully blank, and says, “Please excuse me.”

He then mechanically turns and walks out of room, ignoring both Kara, who calls out his nickname in distress, and Alex, who whirls to face her sister while snapping, _“Explain.”_

Querl can’t find it within him to worry about them now. He already knows, with a 98.35% certainty, where their conversation is headed, and what the ultimate outcome of their debate will be.

And he needs some time to think about it.

* * *

 

Querl goes the most private place he knows of in the DEO: his personal laboratory. 

He considers it the most private place because no one other than himself ever steps foot inside it, a fact that’s largely by design. When Alex first gave him a choice of any unused lab that he desired to use, he naturally chose the one farthest away from the chaos of everyday DEO activities. As a result, hardly anybody ever so much as walks by the room, never mind enters it.

His isolationist tendencies and lack of a friendly attitude don’t exactly encourage visitors either, but that’s neither here nor there.

Querl has always disliked others disturbing him when he’s in the middle of a personal project, though his fellow Legionnaires had frequently disregarded this preference, popping in and out of his 31st century lab whenever they pleased. It's an aspect of his life that Querl doesn’t want to admit he’s grown used to, and is even beginning to miss, but… well.

However, right now, he isn’t in his lab to work. He’s there to ponder his current predicament.

And wait for the inevitable to arrive.

He waits for precisely 17.85 minutes. During that time, he paces, organizes the materials cluttering his primary worktable, paces some more, and then reorganizes those same materials using a slightly different, yet 23% more effective categorical system. Eventually, he chooses to sit, so as to appear less anxious. Perching on a stool, he fiddles with a few pieces of scrap metal that were left in the ‘miscellaneous’ pile after his second bout of organizing.

At exactly the 17.85-minute mark, he takes a deep breath.

“So,” he calls out, “when do we begin our new assignment?”

Kara’s response comes from behind him: “Alex wants us to start ASAP, so this Tuesday—wait, how did you know I was here?”

Querl turns around in his seat to find her barely standing past the threshold of the doorway. She looks to the left and right, as if expecting to find a security camera or some other device that could have alerted him to her presence.

“You’re rather predictable,” he replies with a shrug. When Kara’s mouth begins to dip into a frown, he hastily adds, “That’s not necessarily a bad thing, for the record—it simply means that your disposition rarely fluctuates, and therefore consistently dictates your actions. You have a strong set of core values, and you reliably follow them.” His focus drifts. “You are… impressively steadfast. Unwavering in your beliefs… it’s a truly commendable quality—”

He cuts off abruptly, once he realizes that he’s inadvertently shifted from explaining himself to outright complimenting her. He looks away, clearing his throat to distract from the heat steadily creeping up his neck. The moment of embarrassment is worth it, though, when he looks back and sees that Kara is no longer frowning. Instead, she looks... astonished? Perplexed? Querl isn't quite sure how to interpret her expression beyond a simple 'not negative'.

“Also,” he adds, almost as an afterthought, “I could see your reflection in this satellite panel when you entered.”

He holds up the slightly curved, yet still mirror-like piece of metal, showing Kara her distorted likeness inside it. She stares at her reflection, blinks, and then laughs.

Or rather, she lets out a few sharp _“Ha!”_ sounds, which Querl automatically interprets as a laugh, though it’s not a type of laugh he’s ever heard from Kara before.

“Okay, I’ll admit,” she says with another stilted laugh. “You really had me going for a minute there, with all that _‘steadfast disposition’_ and _‘unwavering beliefs’_ stuff you were saying.” She ducks her head, fiddling with her glasses, and for a moment, Querl thinks she might be blushing. “Ha, I guess I should’ve known you didn’t mean it...”

Querl realizes then that she’s misunderstood him, and is assuming that his initial explanation about her personality had been untrue—an attempt at a _joke_ , even. Telling a joke of any kind would be rather unlike him, but he supposes that it’s not completely outside the realm of statistical possibility.

He opens his mouth to correct her, only to pause, thinking better of it. Perhaps it’s best if Kara doesn’t know just how extensively he’s studied her traits and behavior. _Is performing such an in-depth analysis considered inappropriate? Winn seemed to appreciate the effort when I used a similar tactic to procure his gift, but he also has noticeably different proclivities than most organics—he does collect_ dirt _, after all—so perhaps Kara would not feel the same way…_

He reminds himself that she’s already chided him once before after he went ‘overboard’ with research. And quite recently, at that.

Given that fact, he decides to leave the matter be.

They have more important things to discuss, regardless.

Taking note of the stack of papers Kara is carrying with a raised eyebrow, Querl asks, “I assume we have paperwork that needs to be filled out before we begin our journey into espionage?”

Kara walks fully into the room, shaking her head, a lopsided smile on her face. “I guess I shouldn’t even bother asking how you already knew that Alex decided to put you on this assignment instead of Jensen,” she says, in lieu of answering him.

“Well, I do predict eventualities with a—”

“A 99.12% efficiency rate?” She cuts him off, nodding introspectively. “Yeah, you have said that a couple of times before, come to think of it...”

This gives him pause. “And you remembered the exact percentage?”

“Uh, yeah?”

He’s not sure why he feels so pleased by this fact, but he does. A small smile creeps its way onto his face. “Oh.”

“Anyway, um, Alex and I figured that since the two of us already have an established cover and everything, it just… made the most sense for us to work together.”

“Yes, I understand the thought process.”

“And that’s why I thought we could… well, that this might come in handy.” She steps closer to him and holds out the stack of papers, her stance eerily familiar, and Querl’s stomach drops when he takes hold of the packet and finally reads the title.

_Research Notes & Contract Concerning the Fictitious Romantic Relationship Between Kara Zor-El Danvers and Querl Dox_

The horror that he feels is rather analogous to the realization that meddling with time has caused his evil relative to be resurrected from the dead, thus putting his life and the lives of his entire species at risk. (All right, so perhaps that’s a slight exaggeration—but _still_.)

He feels hot all over. Too hot. A medical warning flashes in the back of his mind, alerting him to a shock-induced drop in blood pressure and heart rate, resulting in hypoxia of the brain. Together, the symptoms might as well be screaming FAINTING IMMINENT. Querl reminds himself to breathe. He sucks in a breath, then another, and continues to do so until his blood pressure and oxygen levels return to normal. He _cannot_ allow himself to faint in front of Kara. He would never be able to face her again if he did.

 _Where did you get this?_ he almost asks, before he realizes that it's an unnecessary question, because he already knows the answer: Kara must have taken the contract with her after he discarded it two days ago. Leaving it behind like that had been careless of him—he should have burned it.

Instead, he says, "I thought you disapproved of this particular course of action." His voice sounds weak even to his own ears.

Kara bites her lip and glances away from him. The action suggests a feeling of guilt, but Querl cannot for the life of him figure out what she has to feel guilty over. After all, her assessment of his written contract as an overreaction had been _correct_.

“I know what I said on Friday,” she admits. “But, well, things are different now. I didn’t think we really needed this before… but now we clearly do. So, since we have it, we should use it, don’t you think?”

“Yes,” he answers automatically, because he knows that her logic is sound. However, some stubborn, emotional part of him remains resistant to the idea for reasons unknown. “Did you… read it?” he asks. He’s irrationally terrified to know the answer.

“ _Mhmm_.” 

“All of it?”

“Yep." She tilts her chin up proudly. “All thirty-two pages, _including_ the bibliography.” He must look skeptical, because she rolls her eyes and adds, “Okay fine, so I _might’ve_ used super-speed to read faster—but I definitely still absorbed everything.”

Querl thinks of Kara reading through all of the contract’s oftentimes intimate details, and feels a bit woozy again. “Oh. I see.”

“There’s some stuff we won’t need, like the restaurant Yelp reviews, since we already know where we’ll be eating,” Kara continues. “But I do think we should use the backstory of our relationship that you wrote, which is very good, if a bit, uh... unrealistic.” She smiles at that, treating the story as if it’s an actual shared memory between them, and not an amalgamation of his entirely clinical research. Clearly, she expects him to respond in kind.

Querl knows that he _should_ respond to her, but he finds he can’t, his mind instead stuck on two words: _Our relationship._ During his initial writing process, he’d run countless simulations in his head about how his ideas would realistically be executed, about what pretending to date Kara would actually entail.

But simulating a fictitious relationship with Kara is, apparently, much easier for him to conceptualize than the reality of _actually going on dates with her_. Especially when those dates are being officially mandated by Alex, who is both Kara’s sister _and_ his boss.

That kind of oversight had no place in his original plan, and neither did the espionage that they are expected to perform. Now all of his calculations have been thrown off, and _nothing_ is going as he predicted it would—

“You know, you look a lot less excited about this than you did on Friday.” Kara tilts her head and furrows her brows, studying him. She looks far more scholarly with her glasses on, he can’t help but notice amidst everything else. “I thought you’d be happy that we actually get a chance to use all this stuff. What’s wrong?”

Querl fiddles with a piece of scrap metal on the table, not meeting her eyes. “I was… admittedly more enthusiastic about the concept of a fictitious relationship with you when I thought it was a plan that you yourself had devised, rather than an official assignment that the Director has foisted upon you. I may not have experience with romantic relationships, but I do understand the concept of consent, and I dislike the thought of you being forced to participate in activities with me that you do not wish to partake in.”

It doesn’t quite hit him until he says it, that his original enthusiasm had largely been due to the misconception that Kara  _wanted_ to spend more time with him, but once he voices the thought, he knows that it’s true. He'd wanted Kara to want this. To _want_ to work with him _._ And therefore, the idea of them being _ordered_ to work together is deeply unsatisfying to him.

"Oh, _Brainy_..." He hears her sigh, but he doesn't look up until a screech of metal cuts through the lab—it's Kara, dragging another stool over to where he's sitting. She sits down beside him and leans forward, elbows resting on her knees. Her hair momentarily distracts him, particularly how the curls in it sway with her movements.

“Look,” she says, “your concern is sweet, but no one’s _forcing_ me to do this with you. If I really wanted to, I could probably find a way to explain away Jensen to Lena and the rest of Catco. But don’t you get it? I don’t _want_ to work with Jensen.”

He’s stunned. “You don’t?”

She grimaces. “No way. There’s just something about him, y’know? I can’t put my finger on it, but it’s like he’s almost too… too…”

“ _Perfect,_ ” Querl mutters under his breath. 

Kara arches an eyebrow. “What was that?” 

_Right, of course—superhuman hearing. Sprock._

“Nothing,” he replies a little too quickly, his gaze darting away from her.

Kara, meanwhile, looks like she’s fighting the urge to laugh, her blue eyes twinkling behind her glasses. “ _Mhmm_. You see? This is why I like you better.”

“You… like... me,” Querl echoes. He’s not sure if his inflection makes the sentence sound like a question or not. He’s also not sure if he even _meant_ for it to be a question or not.

He’s not sure of anything right now, and it’s terribly destabilizing.

Even worse, something that he said has apparently hurt Kara, because her face collapses into an expression that Querl immediately recognizes as unhappiness. He’s surprised, therefore, when she reaches out and rests a gentle hand on his forearm. “Of _course_ I like you, Brainy,” she says. “You’re my friend.” And just like that, the source of her distress becomes clear: Her unhappiness is not _because_ of him; it’s _on behalf_ of him. “Why would you ever think otherwise?”

He shrugs, awkward, unsure how to deal with such blatant _caring_. It’s a sentiment that’s always felt alien to him—entirely missing from his childhood, and rare even in his time as a Legionnaire. “I’ve found it safest to assume that most people don’t like me,” he simply says, not bothering to sugarcoat it. _And 89.5% of the time, my assumption is correct._ “I am, after all, notoriously difficult to work with—or so I’ve been told.”

Kara opens and closes her mouth a few times, clearly struggling to respond. Finally, she huffs out a breath and declares, “Well, I’m not like most people.”

 _No, you certainly aren’t,_ he thinks, embarrassingly awestruck.

“And in case it wasn’t clear the first time, I _do_ like you. A lot, actually. Okay?”

Querl swallows, but finds the action surprisingly difficult to perform. It’s almost as if something has wedged itself into his esophagus, disrupting the natural movement of the muscles there. “I understand,” he manages to say, despite the illusionary blockage.

Kara nods, seemingly satisfied with this answer. “Alright, great. So… are we good?”

Querl has heard this expression enough times from Mon-El to know that she really means _‘is our friendship still intact,_ ’ and not _‘are we objectively good people_ , _’_ which had been his initial interpretation of the phrase.

“Yes, I believe we are.” He even matches her smile, though more for her benefit than his own. “However, I do have one question.”

“Yeah, of course. Shoot.”

“I... can’t? I'm unarmed.”

“What? Oh, uh, no, I just—” Kara shakes her head, letting out a breathy laugh. “I just meant: go ahead and ask your question.”

“Ah.” Querl chooses not to dwell on the misstep in communication. He’s used to them by now. “As I was saying, I couldn’t help but notice that you referred to the background I constructed for our relationship as _unrealistic_. As that narrative was written using an algorithm that determines the most common romantic clichés on Earth, I question what, exactly, could possibly be _unrealistic_ about it?” He doesn’t mean to sound offended, but she _did_ essentially call his algorithm’s accuracy into question. Such a serious accusation would make any true mathematician feel at least a little defensive.

Kara just looks at him for a moment, expression unreadable. Then, apparently making a decision, she scoots her stool closer to him and leans in until she can reach the contract sitting on the table. “Here, let me show you.”

Querl is immediately aware of their close proximity. Usually, he protests against others invading his personal space, but in Kara’s case he finds himself leaning forward instead of away, reducing the gap between their bodies even further. He tells himself that he needs to, in order to read the contract along with her.

“See here, this part,” Kara says, after flipping several pages until she settles on the section titled _Relationship Background_. She produces a pen from somewhere on her person, and uses it as a pointer. “This stuff about us meeting through Alex is good, because you two work together and that makes sense, but then there’s, uh…  _this_ line.”

She blushes as Querl reads the line she’s pointing to aloud: _“It was love at first sight.”_

He turns to look at her curiously, only to be momentarily startled by just how close she is. Her face is mere inches away from his own. She’s so close that he can see the individual freckles scattered across her nose and cheeks. They remind him of a clear night sky, filled with billions of pinpricks of starlight, and he resists a sudden impulse to catalogue those freckles, to trace his fingers across her skin and map the constellations he finds there. 

“I… I fail to see how that line is unrealistic,” he stammers, thrown by her closeness, by her freckles, by the luminosity of her eyes and the cupid's bow of her lips. “The concept of love at first sight was by far the most popular notion about romantic love detected by the algorithm.”

“It’s popular, yeah. But realistic or common in real life… not really.”

Querl frowns. “I don't understand.”

Kara looks away, her brows drawing together, forming a crinkle between them. “Love at first sight is… a nice fantasy, basically. Usually, if you think you love someone right away, that _wah-pow_ feeling will turn out to be… kind of hollow. Or not what you thought it was.” Her voice quiets as she adds, “In reality, love is… a slow build. It's a compilation of a million little things. And God, it's _complicated,_ too. It can be confusing, and frustrating, and wonderful all at once. And the hardest thing about love is that... it's not always right for you, or meant to last, even if it feels like it should be." She smiles sadly, but not at him—and Querl abruptly realizes that she’s speaking from experience. That her views are not based on an algorithm, but on the tangible, real people that she’s loved—and lost—in the past. "In stories, characters fall in love at first sight all the time, and that love is always perfect and lasts forever. But that's not real—it's just cheesy fiction that we tell ourselves to escape from reality for a little while.” 

Their entire conversation suddenly feels far too intimate for Querl’s liking, like he’s stumbled into a private moment, and heard something that he shouldn’t have.

He knows he can’t fully understand what Kara's saying, not really. Not in the way she does. He has no prior experience with love, after all. Instead, all he has are more questions, and not ones that are going to be answered by a fictitious relationship. Fictitious, like the stories Kara talked about—nothing more than a brief escape from a much more painful reality. 

In an unexpected wave of frustration, Querl snatches the pen out of a startled Kara’s hand and unceremoniously crosses out the offending line of text. “There,” he says curtly. “I fixed it.” After an awkward pause, he holds the writing utensil back out to Kara in a silent apology.

She stares at him, blinking, as if she's just woken up from a deep sleep. It takes her an extra moment to notice the pen, though she takes it once she does. "Sorry," she says, voice light and untroubled. "I didn't mean to get so carried away. Hey, why don’t we go through the rest of this section together, just to make sure that we’re both clear on all the details before Tuesday?” She smiles a dazzling, too-wide smile.

Her desire to move on from their current subject is so transparent that even Querl is able to pick up on it. The feeling is more than mutual. 

“I think that sounds like a excellent idea,” he replies, nearly sighing with relief.

They spend the next hour reviewing the details of their cover story and working out a plan of action for their first excursion to the mob-owned restaurant, their tilted heads forming a collaborative space in what was previously an isolated laboratory. Querl keeps expecting the novelty of Kara's presence beside him to fade, for their dynamic to reach some kind of normalized equilibrium, but it never does. He’s consistently aware of how her shoulder keeps brushing his, how her nose scrunches whenever she concentrates, and how her hair shimmers, cascading down her back like a waterfall turned gold by the setting sun. Perhaps most importantly, he's also aware of every one of her smiles, and the way her eyes shine when she looks at him. 

It's not the same awareness as the skin-buzzing admiration that he felt earlier, about Supergirl. This is different. Something that he has no name for, and no idea how to define. He just knows that he wants to capture it, the essence of the feeling, and hold onto it, driven by some irrational fear that it will never happen again. That no one else will ever look at him the way Kara does. 

Without necessarily meaning to, he finds himself devoting precious brainpower to committing each and every one of his observations to memory. 

Eventually, Kara leans back in her seat, stretching her stiff muscles with a groan. (Querl automatically memorizes the exact curve formed by her arching back, and the frequency of the groan as it escapes her throat, and files them alongside everything else Kara-related. One last entry of information before the magic of the past hour ends, and his life returns to its normal routine.) 

“I think that should be good enough for now,” she says, oblivious to his thought processes. “As long as we stick to the plan, then there shouldn’t be any surprises on Tuesday. Agreed?” 

"Yes, agreed. Although, speaking of surprises…” Querl hesitates before continuing. “Frankly, I'm _most_ surprised that your sister actually agreed to all of this in the first place."  _That she's willing to entrust me with this mission—with you._  "She doesn't seem to be... what's the phrase—my _biggest fan?"_  

Kara shrugs, noticeably more relaxed now, after working beside him for so much time. She seems to have entirely forgotten their uncomfortable discussion about the nature of love. "Sure, you and Alex might not always see eye-to-eye, but deep down, she knows that you’re trustworthy and capable. And besides, the only thing she _really_ cares about is that the person I'm working with speaks Russian."

Something in his expression must betray him, because Kara suddenly looks worried. "Brainy... you _can_ speak Russian, right?"

Not long after their first meeting, Querl had informed Kara that he was fluent in all the known languages of the galaxy, a fact that she'd found very impressive at the time. It was not a lie. He _is_ fluent in every known language... _of the 31st century_. Unfortunately, many of Earth's languages were lost in the Great Crisis of 2455—including, apparently, Russian. The Russian language does not, in fact, exist at all in the 31st century.

Therefore, Querl very much does _not_ speak Russian.

"Of course I can speak it," he scoffs, lying through his teeth. In the back of his mind, an ominous, digitized timer begins counting down.

He officially has forty-eight hours to learn an entirely new language before their first mission—their first _date_.

Querl takes one look at the relieved smile on Kara's face, and thinks,  _I'll do it in twelve._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hooray! We're _finally_ gonna get some fake dating next chapter! Hopefully that should make up for this chapter being mostly exposition (and probably kind of boring in some parts, sorry). Figuring out all this Plot Stuff is also what took so long (plus me being sick for a month, oops). Things will start to pick up more now.
> 
> Also, in case anyone caught it and was wondering: Yes, I did in fact swipe Anatoli Knyazev from Arrow, rather than create a whole new Russian mobster OC—you can just consider this his Earth-38 doppelgänger. :) 
> 
> \--
> 
> NEXT: _Kara shouldn't feel nervous. There's no reason for her to feel nervous. After all, she knows exactly what's about to happen, at exactly what time, and knows exactly what to do when it does. That's the whole reason why she and Brainy worked out the details of their plan beforehand—so there'd be no surprises._
> 
> _And yet, she's spent the past 30 minutes glancing at the closed elevator doors, then at the clock on the wall, then back at the doors, before finally forcing herself to pay attention to her actual work again, for a few minutes at least. Her leg bounces, hidden beneath her desk. A staccato rhythm that betrays the butterflies fluttering in her stomach._
> 
> _The completely unnecessary butterflies._
> 
> _Because there's no reason for her to feel nervous._


End file.
